


all my walls come tumbling down

by hackercatz (tsunbrownie)



Series: you're everything i need and more [1]
Category: Mr. Robot (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Coffee Shops & Cafés, M/M, and still hates evilcorp, elliot spells tyrell's name wrong to spite him but tyrell thinks hes flirting, where elliot runs a small coffee shop which also does repairs
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-11
Updated: 2019-05-11
Packaged: 2020-02-29 19:03:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,718
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18784273
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tsunbrownie/pseuds/hackercatz
Summary: It's a Pavlov’s dog reaction; how he starts making that atrocity of a drink every single morning at 6:55am for a man he knows will walk in at exactly 7AM.Obligatory coffee shop AU.





	all my walls come tumbling down

**Author's Note:**

> i came up w/ this at 2am and it was actually good and now im gonna cry i love them. unbeta'd because i wrote this in like an hour and a half while avoiding all the science i had to clear and there are far too much commas than what i USUALLY use but i dont have enough braincells for it 
> 
> also i dont know anything about coffee (i drink canned ones to keep myself awake and Nothing Else) so if you have a highly caffeinated drink that is also extremely pretentious and atrocious please inform me so i can change it
> 
> btw this series is basically aus stringed together by beyonce halo lyrics as its title and i have like 8 ideas and im dying. help

Elliot Alderson runs a little coffee shop in the corner of the street called Mr. Robot.

It’s not just him. His little sister, Darlene, helps him when she remembers to come in for work. Mostly, she only comes in to steal his clothes, clean the fridge and demand Elliot to make her good Frappuccino, so she can’t be relied upon, but she’s a good damn baker when she can remember to bring in the pastries. Usually, when Darlene isn’t in, Trenton, a friend of Darlene’s and a damn good hacker, helps by making them in her stead.

Mr. Robot didn’t start as a coffee shop. It was a computer repair shop at first, owned by his father. It was Darlene’s idea to expand business, to sell other things like cookies and drinks; Darlene would prepare the bread, Elliot would arrange the drinks. So that people waiting for the repairs wouldn’t have to leave and come back later.

He still does repairs. Not many people ask him, since they all assume it’s a coffee shop when they enter, and he never sets the misconceptions straight. He prefers working software over hardware anyways, and customers with tech problems are just _stupid_ half of the time. It gives him more time to work on fsociety, and although it means his income gets a harsh cut, Elliot’s never cared about money. If it comes to the worst, he could always sleep in the café instead.

He opens at 6:30 each day, only because Elliot wakes up at 6AM every single morning like clockwork, and there’s nothing much to do but to work in his life. His other hobby, fsociety, can be done from the café. That is what he is doing, typing away on the computer to break into a secure government network to expose E-corp of all its corruption, when a customer stumbles into his corner shop at seven in the morning.

He shuts the computer fast, puts up a polite smile, not bothering to meet their eyes. The customer breathes out, “Can I have a venti soy quadruple shot latte with no foam?”

Elliot blinks once. He blinks again. “What did you just say?” He chokes out, frozen, and the customer repeats again, as if he thinks Elliot didn’t hear it. That isn’t what he meant – he meant _what the fuck did you just say to me?_. He truly wants to tell the customer to fuck off to a mega-conglomerate like Starbucks, but then he raises his face properly and takes in the sight of the customer, and _holy shit_ it’s Tyrell Wellick, the CTO of Evilcorp. It’s so shocking, it almost makes him forget about the atrocious coffee order he now is obligated to prepare.

He should really tell him to fuck off. He should. He wants to. Yet Elliot turns towards the counter and starts preparing, because if he’s trying to hack the man and his company, it’s the best that he doesn’t draw any attention to himself. He breathes out slowly not to betray anything in his body language. Thankfully, when he finishes, Tyrell doesn’t seem to have found anything odd about his demeanor. 

“It’s Tyrell,” the fully suited man shouts when Elliot picks up the sharpie to write on Tyrell's coffee cup. As if there was a person in this country that didn’t know his name. Out of spite, and a hopeful wish in his heart that he’d take offense by the wrong name and never return, he scribes down, ‘Tyler’, and passes it to Tyrell.

Tyrell, however, only chuckles at the wrong name, slides a 10$ bill, tells him to keep the change, and leaves. Elliot isn’t sure if this whole thing wasn’t a dream. He collapses on the counter, coding long forgotten.

* * *

 

Every single day after that, Tyrell arrives at that time to order the same horrible latte. It’s almost a part of the routine; Tyrell would walk into Mr. Robot, politely ask Elliot for that drink, and Elliot would silently start preparing for it, as Tyrell hums and checks his phone. When it’s finished, Tyrell would turn the cup holder to read the name on it and say, “you spelled my name wrong again,” slide him a 10$, thank him for the drink. Elliot would roll his eye, or say _whatever_ , and Tyrell would only grin at his dismal mood, as if it was entertaining to him.

At one point, Tyrell starts saying, “you spelled my name wrong again, Elliot,” instead of just the phrase, and Elliot stares at him with a deer in a headlight look and Tyrell laughs back, murmuring, “you have a note here,” and shows a piece of paper Darlene passed to him – _gonna steal your sweatshirt on the way out, Elliot, don’t freak out if you can’t find it, - Darlene_. He’s not sure what to feel about the man he is supposed to hate calling him by name, and what he feels when what he feels isn’t complete disgust. Whatever. He’s probably just getting used to all this.

* * *

 

It's a Pavlov’s dog reaction; how he starts making that atrocity of a drink every single morning at 6:55am for a man he knows will walk in at exactly 7AM. Since he knows Tyrell will arrive exactly on time to order the exact same drink, like he has for the past two months, there’s no point of waiting until the man orders, and decides to get it done and over with.

The first time he does it, Tyrell is absolutely delighted.

“Hey! You memorized my coffee order!”

Absurd. Elliot memorized it the first day Tyrell walked in with the most atrocious order he’s ever heard of. Not that it’s much: Elliot’s always had exceptional memory, and Tyrell’s ordered the same beverage at least fifty times. At this point, he’s not even conscious when he prepares for it. He’s not going to tell that to one of most powerful men in the country, however, so he just passes the drink forward, until it touches the tip of Tyrell’s fingers.

Tyrell picks up the order, chuckles to himself. “You still spelled my name wrong,” he twists the cover so the writing can be seen by Elliot, and it reads ‘ _Tirel_ ’ in his bold handwriting written with a sharpie. “You memorized my order, but not my name? It’s Tyrell, T-Y-R-E-L-L,” Tyrell repeats patiently, but there’s a sparkle in his eyes that makes Elliot’s stomach churn, so he just drops his eyes and mutters,

“Yeah, whatever, _Tirel_ ,” 

* * *

 

Eventually, like a Pavlov’s dog, the bell will ring and there wouldn’t be food. Today seems to be that day, because it’s nearing 7:05 and there is no sign of Tyrell. Elliot glares at the barbaric drink, because if Tyrell isn’t coming today, that means he’s the one who’s to drink it, and there is _no way in hell_ Elliot is putting that godawful beverage anywhere near his lips.

That is why he closes the shop, flips the _open_ sign to _closed_ as he heads up to the E-Corp headquarters. The place is exactly as he imagined it’d be, dismal and grey and colorless, human beings forced into small squares and branded with employee badges. He rises the elevator, realizes he doesn’t know which floor Tyrell is in, and awkwardly asks the receptionist for the information.

By the time he finds out which floor the man resides in, the coffee’s already gone cold, but considering how terrible it is, surely, the temperature wouldn’t matter. It’d go from tasting bad to awful at most.

When he finally reaches the floor, Tyrell’s sitting in a middle of a mostly-glass room shuffling through stacks and stacks of papers. “Elliot?” He sounds surprised to see him, then Tyrell’s face instantly turns from a frown to utter delight. His eye flicks to Elliot’s hand. “Did you come all this way to bring me my coffee?”

“I don’t have customers until eight, and I already made this,” he signals to the drink in his hand, “and I wasn’t going to put it anywhere near my lips.”

“D-Did you just criticize my order?” Tyrell doesn’t look scandalized, but more like he’s amused, so Elliot just silently passes his drink and raises his eyebrows. He feels like he doesn’t have to answer that. Tyrell takes a sip, nods thoughtfully ( _seriously? He can still drink that?_ ) and then turns the cup holder to read his name. Then—

“Hey, you got my name right this time!”

 _What? I couldn’t have._ He usually puts most thought while contemplating what new wrong name he’d write on Tyrell’s cup. Except that today, he was busy thinking about why Tyrell wasn’t coming that he rushed through the whole process. He must have accidentally written the right name. Yet, he can’t get himself to be truly angry at the almost-childish joy spreading throughout Tyrell’s face.

“Thought it was time.”

Tyrell’s face changes at that, to as if he’s thinking about something. After a pregnant pause, and two sips of the horrendous coffee, Tyrell takes out his wallet, pulls out a note and presses it forward towards Elliot. When Elliot picks it up, he realizes it’s a 50$, along with a card. Business card. With Tyrell’s number.

“That’s a delivery tip,” he tells him patiently when Elliot snaps his head up, and adds, as if he knew Elliot would protest, “if you think it’s too much, you can buy me lunch when this is all over. I have some technology meeting before, but I should be available by noon.”

Yeah, sure, why not, a meal with his archnemesis. The man that symbolizes everything he detests, would fight. Then he takes in a sight of Tyrell, the way his mouth is quirking around the straw, and finds that he just can’t say no. Truly, Tyrell couldn’t be responsible for anything evil by himself? If he was, then Elliot would just expose him. At the least, he could possibly get security access.

But all of that’s an excuse. The thing is, he _wants_ to say yes. “You’re buying,” Elliot mutters, and Tyrell’s face instantly lights up when he realizes that Elliot just said yes.

“It’s a date!” Tyrell shouts as Elliot exits, and he doesn’t bother to suppress how his lips twist up into a smile. Yeah, a date. It’s a date.

**Author's Note:**

> twitter [@tsunbrownie](http://twitter.com/tsunbrownie)  
> if u have ideas hmu @ twitter. if you have headcanons im always ready to Die


End file.
